The Petersen Herd

Monday, August 19, 2013

Wet Fun

A few weeks ago we were out in the yard working. It started to rain and I told Ksenya to take Leisl in the house and be careful because the garden plastic is wet and slippery. She picked up the baby and walked not-too-carefully to the house. Half-way there she slipped and dropped little Lovely. The baby was fine, but I was angry. It really wasn't anything to be angry about, but I gave Ksenya the look of death and swooped in to pick up the baby on my way in the house (why didn't I just take her in the first place?) Ksenya was hurt and wouldn't come in the house so I shut the door and said, "fine, enjoy the rain". Writing this makes it all more obvious how immature I was being.

10 minutes later I looked out into the torrents of rain and thunder to yell at Ksenya to come inside. I saw her on the trampoline jumping as hard as she could. Her mouth was moving. That's so like me - to throw herself into something muttering out her issues until she feels better. I couldn't help but smile. She's so beautiful and wonderful and just enough like me that occasionally we butt heads and so much different from me that more often than not I don't completely understand how she's feeling which makes it even worse for both of us.

Not this time. This time I knew how she felt. Frustrated with herself for hurting her sister, angry at me for not understanding, guilty that she wasn't living up to my ever-so-high expectations and thoroughly bitter that she'd been jumping for 10 minutes without any recognition from me.

And then I finally did something right.

I walked out into the rain to the trampoline and without a word took my shoes off and began to jump with her. Within a few minutes we were doing ring around the rosies and jumping and splashing and laughing together. We were thoroughly soaked and hysterical with laughter and stayed out for much longer than was probably wise with the thunder crashing and the lighting searing the sky around us as we jumped and laughed. Neighbors drove by staring and pointing and we jumped and laughed. We slipped and fell and lay soaking wet as the rain pelted us together laughing.

Finally we came inside to get cleaned up and I knew I'd forget to write it down if I didn't have a picture to remind me. It was such a simply beautiful moment. I am going to take those moments more often!